It is now becoming commonplace to send electronic documents to printers for rendering a final printed product. This works well when the document is a simple document having no assembly requirements other than to possibly staple each copy together. Often, however, complex documents are created which require assembly such as, for example, tabs inserted between certain sections, special types of bindings, different paper colors for different sections, added exhibits, etc.
When it is desired to print such complex documents at remote sites a problem exists in communicating the precise manor as to how the complex document is to be assembled. Further problems exist when the assembly process itself requires additional printed material. Thus, for example, when the tabs (or other section separators) must have special printing thereon it is difficult to communicate all of the desired assembly information to a remote source for the proper assembly of the complex document.
Since many documents must be delivered to third parties at remote locations it is important to be able to print and assemble such documents at such remote locations. In fact, commercially available application programs that are used to create documents have embedded in them a myriad of formatting and other control codes that allows, for example, the paper size, tabs, line spacing, font size, font style, etc to be controlled at the time of printing the document. Thus, it is easy to send a document from a creating user to a recipient and when the recipient prints out the document (or views it on a screen) the look and feel of the document is presented as the creating user determined it should be. However, today that same ease of electronic communication does not exist for complex documents. Accordingly, if a complex document is created at a first enterprise it is necessary to assemble that document at that first enterprise and then mail (or courier) the document to a second enterprise. This is so because it is not practical to ask the recipient (who could be a sales prospect, a Governmental institution, or even a friend) to, for example, print a document, create different color tabs having certain markings on each tab, insert paper of a certain color ahead of each section, bind the document in a certain way, etc. The problem is compounded when it is required to add information to the document just prior to printing or assembly of the document.